


Catch the Breeze 'Til We Float

by parcequelle



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Community: femslashex, Episode Related, F/F, Holodecks/Holosuites
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-14
Updated: 2014-10-14
Packaged: 2018-02-21 04:07:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2454170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parcequelle/pseuds/parcequelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beverly and Deanna reconnect post "The Loss".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catch the Breeze 'Til We Float

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ariestess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariestess/gifts).



> Written for ariestess for the 2014 Femslash Exchange.

Light surrounded, warm breeze dusting through her loosened hair, and Beverly arches her neck back and sighs, content. “Now _that's_ more like it.”

A foot away, arms and legs and curls all spread with an inelegant abandon Beverly wouldn't normally associate with her, is Deanna. She turns her head, stretching, and the line of her jaw catches Beverly's eye, draws her gaze down to where it rests an indulgent, unobserved moment at the hollow of her throat. No uniforms, today – that was one of the rules – so they are both in civilian clothes; Deanna is firm about the importance of dressing as though one is truly leaving the ship, the planet, the surroundings of one's everyday life, even when the recreation is holographic, and Beverly agrees. It's been years, years during which she's experienced so many different versions of life as it once was or still is, historically accurate or rather spun from fiction or imagination, but she still knows: the world may not be real, but the experience is, and that's what matters. Shore leave is scheduled for the near future, but this, today, Deanna and Beverly and the peak of a towering mountain, is something else. This is their way to reconnect.

“I don't know that I'll ever get used to this,” Deanna murmurs. Her voice is lower than usual, huskier, the combined effect of being off-duty and of lying sprawled across this rock. The sound of the waves crashing far below them, the bellbirds twittering bright in the trees above them, make Beverly feel that she and Deanna are the only living creatures in the vicinity, caught in between, somehow existing on their own plane. Beverly doesn't turn to face her, too occupied by the clouds that pass and curl and change their form overhead, but she knows Deanna knows she's listening. Deanna continues, “Feeling the texture of this rock—” and she runs her hand along it, along this solid, tangible, impossible construction that is keeping them from falling hundreds of metres into the ocean, “—wondering at the strength of the sun.”

“Picking grit out from underneath your fingernails,” Beverly adds, grinning at her.

Deanna grins back. “All part of the authentic experience.”

“I know.” Beverly flops back, bends her knees up in front of her. “Sometimes I can understand all too clearly how Mr. Barclay found himself holo-addicted. The prospect of permanent escape into a reality of your own design?” Deanna glances over at her, dark eyes squinted against the sun, and Beverly shrugs. “I'll admit I can see the appeal.”

“There's appeal, of course; it's just a question of how far we take it, when we know that it's too much... fantasy remains in fantasy for a reason. It's surprisingly easy for an escape to become a prison.”

Beverly rolls over then, curiosity piqued, and says, “Even for you?”

Deanna laughs, nudges her in the calf with her bare foot; it's cold, despite the warmth of the artificial climate, and Beverly's exposed skin pimples at the contact. “What,” Deanna asks, “you think counsellors are immune to the occasional vice?”

“Not counsellors, but perhaps _empaths_. I wonder, could such a thing really present the same temptation to you as it could to a human?”

Her smile softens, dims, and Beverly doesn't need the biological peculiarities of a half Betazoid to know why; Deanna is thinking of what's just happened, of how close she came to losing her powers for good. To giving up. She doesn't say so, though, and neither does Beverly – she watches her, patient, allows a moment to pass until Deanna answers the question. “Perhaps not. But perhaps it all depends on the scenario, too.”

A whirring bellbird circles down to where they're sitting and perches delicately on an outcropping of rock. Beverly smiles at it, as instinctive as breathing, but to her there is no difference between the presence of this bird and a real one. She could fall asleep and wake up here and not know she wasn't really in New Zealand, but could Deanna?

“It wouldn't work if there were people, of course,” she says. “I can detect the presence of a flesh and blood person from too far away for it to be convincing. There's no... substance. Even with smaller animals, I can feel that there's a difference, a lack of reality. There's nothing I can get a grasp on, so to speak.” She shakes her head, quirks her lips up. “I'm sorry, this probably comes across as a little esoteric. It's difficult to explain.”

“And difficult for a mere human to understand,” Beverly teases. Deanna sits up and crosses her legs in front of her; the bird, still perched where it first landed, startles at the motion and flutters away. Beverly mirrors her posture, bringing them closer, and isn't surprised when Deanna reaches out to take Beverly's hand in her own. It's small, fingers long and warm and thin, but she grips with a strength that Beverly's learned to expect.

She's quiet for a moment, eyes cast out to the water over Beverly's shoulder, and then she says,“I really am sorry, you know. I was so insensitive to you, Beverly, I can hardly believe myself. I—”

“Deanna,” Beverly interrupts, gentle, fingers wrapping back around Deanna's and squeezing, “you don't need to apologise. Not again. We've been over this already, remember? I know you weren't yourself.”

“That's no excuse,” Deanna replies. Her voice is dry, an edge of self-deprecation audible to Beverly's trained ear. “You really never treated me any differently – in fact, you were as good a friend as it was possible to be, and what did I do? Tossed it back at you and stormed out of the room like a child.” She shakes her head, laughter in her eyes, and looks at Beverly side-on. Their hands are still clasped, and Beverly only registers it peripherally – that it's more contact, more intimate than what they usually share hardly matters; foremost is the ease, is the way Deanna's fingers slide and link through hers as though of their own accord; is the warmth that blooms in her chest at the sweep of Deanna's thumb across the sensitive inside of her wrist.

“I've forgiven you, Counsellor,” she murmurs, “so you should take your own advice, and forgive yourself.”

Deanna's rich eyes hold hers for a long, loaded moment – almost too long, though what that means Beverly can't say – and then a smile breaks over her face. She's beautiful; in four years of working together, of seeing one another every day, this is not the first time Beverly's thought it, but it is the first time she feels the knowledge like an almost-physical presence, tinged with want; like a spark that lights its way along her nerves, that shoots through the tips of her fingers to where they lie linked with Deanna's. The thought is a bright, lovely thing in the centre of her mind, and Beverly doesn't think to hide it; doesn't think to, and wouldn't know how go about it if she did. So she waits, with less fear and with fewer doubts than she might have expected herself to have, and she is somehow unsurprised when the response to her desires comes in the form of a smile: wider, brighter, wickeder than the last, layered rich with the warmth of reciprocal interest.

There is no lying, here, no covering or second-guessing or hiding – Beverly's intentions are legible, disclosed; Deanna's encouragement, playing clear across her face, as evident as it would be were Beverly also an empath. She smiles back, feels momentarily, uncharacteristically shy; Beverly opens her mouth to ask her what it feels like from the other side, to ask Deanna what she's reading in Beverly's emotions right now, when something stops her. Something, perhaps the way Deanna's expression has morphed into one of bright playfulness, anticipating; perhaps the way her own heart is guiding her, showing her the way as clearly as a lone, old-fashioned signpost at a country crossroads. Beverly tries her best to live her life without regret, but she's let her head rule her heart too many times before, and those instances, dewdrops in her memory that glisten when the light hits them just right, are sufficient motivation to propel her into wanting to act now; into throwing caution to the wind and going after what she wants, consequences be damned. The moment the thought has formed is the moment the thought has taken precedence, taken flight, and the impish grin that grows on Deanna's face in response makes it clear to her that the message has been not only received, but approved. Deanna takes a step closer, looks as though she's about to speak, and then—

“Five minute warning. Holodeck Three to be vacated for security training exercise at 1600 hours.”

“Acknowledged,” Beverly says, soft, into the space between them. The computer chimes out and they are left, watching each other, the tension of the moment broken but still charged; a second passes, silent but for the gentle sounds of their artificial surroundings, and Beverly smiles. “Shall we, then? It wouldn't do to keep Lieutenant Worf waiting.”

“No, indeed.”

Beverly stands, and extends a hand to help Deanna do the same; if her eyes linger a little too long on the stretch and pull of Deanna's muscles as she stretches her arms above her head, then she doesn't bother to disguise it. Deanna says nothing, but the slight tinge of colour high on her cheekbones – unexpected, charming – is enough to speak for her. “Computer, arch,” she calls, and it obediently appears a few feet away from where their rock used to be; New Zealand fades into the black and yellow grid of the holodeck, and they exit side-by-side, nodding to Worf and his group of security officers as they file in. The doors close before them, whisk away the noise as though it had never been there, leave them standing alone before the control panel. The energy she thought they'd left behind them is eddying around them again now, between them, and Beverly feels the warm curl of anticipation low in her gut, feels it flicker and spread like flames. Deanna's eyes shift and lock on her own, and Crewman Daniels chooses that moment to round the bend of the corridor and stride purposefully past them with a nod and a “Doctor, Counsellor.”

It is almost more than Beverly can manage to tear her eyes from Deanna's and return the pleasantry – though she couldn't for the life of her repeat what she'd said – but the moment remains, fragile and precious and unbreakable if only because they want it to stay that way, when she turns back, and Deanna takes a step closer: small, light, and utterly deliberate. Her intentions are ciphered in the tilt of her hips, in the cock of her head in Beverly's direction and in her eyes, huge and dark and sharp and lively as ever – this is it, is her request and her response and her permission all at once. This is the moment. She wouldn't have expected it to happen in the corridor of deck 11, in the middle of the alpha shift, but that's what life is, isn't it? Unexpected moments that appear out of nowhere to surprise you at thoroughly unexpected times.

It's only natural for her to take a step closer, for her fingers to drift over and entwine with Deanna's, for her to angle her neck into the brush of Deanna's other hand as it lifts to tangle up into her hair. This is the moment she's been waiting for, the moment she's wanted, and now that it's here before her, ready for the taking, she finds she knows exactly what to do with it. The pad of Deanna's thumb brushes over her cheekbone and Beverly smiles, coy, and says, “Counsellor, if it's all right with you, I'd very much like to kiss you right now.”

One eyebrow lifts, Deanna's body flush against hers, and she murmurs back, “Why, Doctor Crusher, I thought you'd never ask. Please do.”

And she does.


End file.
